Tony checked the time: 00.15 hours. The night was passing quickly. The sandstorm was picking up. Visibility could be down to a few metres before he knew it. He knocked the vehicle into gear. Eased on to the accelerator.

  You head north from here . . . hit the road heading east . . .

  He headed north.

  The five-man SAS team was heading cross-country when Brooker uttered a single word: ‘Sandstorm.’

  ‘All we fucking need,’ Danny said.

  They were driving slowly to keep full control of their Land Rovers over the rough, stony foothills of the mountain range they were following. And they drove unseen, without the benefit of headlamps, using NV goggles to scan the way ahead. But NV goggles couldn’t see through sand. Their visibility was down to twenty metres. There was a sound like fine hail as the sand whipped against the metal chassis of the vehicles.

  It would have been quicker, perhaps, to head up to the highway. But Danny had vetoed that idea. There was a high chance that their assault on Al-Zafawi had put the Taliban on high alert. If that was the case, there might be patrols and roadblocks on the main supply routes. Encountering one of those would not only slow them down, it could blow the whole operation.

  Danny knew Tony. His first thought would be for the bullion. He’d killed to get his hands on it. It would be his priority now. Would he head straight there? Maybe he’d already got there and taken the gold. If that was the case they’d see the cache location dug up, and they’d have to rethink their strategy. Might they encounter him the moment they arrived? Or would he bide his time? Devise a strategy? He was, after all, alone and without backup.

  The Regiment’s ace card was that Tony didn’t realise they were on to him, or that they knew about the bullion. But even so, they had to get to the cache quickly. There were no prizes for arriving second.

  The two vehicles trundled on, their occupants silent. To take out one of their own was a bitter job, even if the target was a man like Tony Wiseman. There would be no bragging about this in the squadron hangars of Hereford. It was the kind of op you didn’t ever talk about. You just left it to fester in a corner of your mind.

  The unit trundled on. The howling of the wind grew louder outside. Danny scanned the parched, unforgiving landscape to their left, through the green haze of their NV. Already the stony, forbidding slopes to their right were invisible through the sand clouds.

  Visibility: fifteen metres. The headlamps cut through the whipping sand like a torch through smoke. So Tony nearly missed it.

  A roadside shrine.

  He had imagined something ornate. This wasn’t. It was a few old tyres, bound together with dirty bits of cloth and decorated with sticks that pointed out in all directions. Tony sneered at it, just as he sneered at everything in this shithole of a country.

  He pulled off the road by the shrine and immediately saw, in the light of the headlamps, the indents of a vehicle’s tyres almost covered by moving sand.

  Head north towards the mountains.

  He tried to penetrate the dry cloud all around him to see the mountain range to the north, but it was impossible.

  By rights he should hunker down, wait for the storm to pass.

  No chance. It could only last minutes, but it could also last for several hours. He didn’t have that kind of time to waste.

  Headlights on. Accelerator down.

  Tony forced the vehicle north through the sandstorm for half an hour. He stopped only for a minute, when he was out of sight of the road, to check over his weapons. When half an hour was up, he took a risk, killing the lights and continuing in the darkness. He kept the engine slow and quiet. It was entirely drowned out by the noise of the sandstorm.

  It was the smell that told him he was close. Something had been burning in this vicinity recently. Not an ordinary fire. This wasn’t the smell of wood smoke. It was the stench of burning diesel and machinery. The stench of war.

  He killed the engine. Grabbed his weapons. In the back of the vehicle he found an old blanket, which he wrapped round his head to protect him from the storm, with tiny gaps to see through. Then he advanced on foot.

  The sand stung his hands and seemed to get into all the folds of his clothes within seconds. He didn’t let that slow him down. The terrain undulated. He continued north for a hundred metres, up an incline that led to a neat brow. Here he crouched down on all fours and crawled. He knew he was almost on target, because the smell was getting stronger.

  It was 01.15 hours when he peered over the brow of the hill and saw what he was looking for.

  There was a patch of open ground ahead of him. Somewhere up above, the moon was bright, because he could see the swirling eddies of the sand, and could just make out that the ground was dotted with boulders and low gorse. It stretched for about 150 metres, beyond which the mountain face rose up dramatically. Ordinarily, he would not have been able to identify the cave – it would have been obscured by the sand clouds. But there was a light inside it – flickering, so probably a fire – which distinctly outlined the cave’s opening. He could just make out two mounds on either side of the cave mouth. A dull orange glow emanated from one of them. They looked to Tony like burned vehicles, but he couldn’t be sure at this distance.

  There was no sign of personnel, armed or otherwise.

  He rolled over the brow. He descended five metres on the other side before getting to his feet and priming his rifle. He advanced with the butt pressed firmly into his shoulder, the glowing cave magnified in his sights.

  Tony moved forward at a brisk pace, his finger resting on his trigger guard, his eyes watering as grit entered the slits in his makeshift headdress. Twice, he saw a silhouette pass across the light source in the cave. It was occupied, but he couldn’t tell how many people were there. Halfway across the open ground he quickly panned his weapon. He could now positively identify two vehicles. They had been hit by ordnance. There were bodies lying around them. And a comms satellite to his two o’clock.

  Distance: fifty metres. He slowed his pace. Moved his finger from the trigger guard on to the trigger itself. He saw another vehicle just inside the cave mouth. Its headlamps and windscreen were shot out. The fire was burning just to the left of that, perhaps five metres back from the entrance. A figure was standing in front of it, his back to the entrance, head bowed.

  Tony continued advancing to target.

  Thirty metres.

  Fifteen.

  The figure hadn’t moved. Tony could see that he was male, wearing camouflage gear, with black hair.

  Ten metres out he stopped.

  ‘Turn round!’ he shouted over the howling of the sandstorm. ‘Slowly!’

  The figure didn’t move.

  ‘I said turn round.’

  Nothing.

  Tony pointed his weapon at the vehicle inside the cave. He released a single round. It ricocheted noisily off the chassis.

  Only then did the figure turn.

  Slowly.

  He looked like shit. His face was battered and bloodied. His black beard was matted, his hair straggly over his forehead. The glow of the fire seemed to give his dark skin a red glow. His eyes burned. He looked like a man who wanted to kill.

  ‘Al-Zafawi?’ Tony shouted.

  No response. Just that deadly stare.

  ‘I’m the guy,’ Tony shouted, ‘who stole your gold.’

  Tony didn’t know what reaction to expect. Not this. Al-Zafawi didn’t even seem to be looking at him. The Taliban leader was looking past Tony, into the distance.

  Tony turned, looking back the way he had come. He saw four sets of headlamps burning through the midnight sandstorm. They were trundling down from the brow of the incline from which Tony had first viewed the cave. And they were moving fast.

  Tony spun round. Directed his weapon back at Al-Zafawi and strode up to him. ‘Get to your knees,’ he screamed. ‘Get to your fucking knees!’

  Al-Zafawi did nothing. Tony had to grab his neck with one big hand and throw him to the floor. Once he was down there, Tony aimed his weapon at Al-Zafawi’s head.

  ‘You move, I shoot. You got that? Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand,’ Al-Zafawi breathed.

  The vehicles were halfway across the open ground. Already their headlamps had pierced the clouds of sand and were illuminating the inside of the cave, casting long interior shadows.

  ‘Here’s what I think,’ Tony shouted. ‘I think it’s bullshit that you take the Americans’ bullion. It think you keep it for yourself. And I think you use it to equip your guys. Your Red Unit or whatever the hell you call it. I know they’ve got serious gear. I’ve seen it. It costs money.’

  The four vehicles had stopped twenty metres from the cave mouth. They were in a straight line, each five metres apart from the others. Their doors were opening.

  ‘Here’s what else I think. You want that bullion back.’

  Figures emerged, two from each vehicle. They slammed their doors noisily and moved to the front of the convoy, the bright headlamps silhouetting them.

  Eight guys.

  ‘Here’s the problem,’ Tony shouted. ‘The guy who was here earlier knows where I’ve hidden it. He’s heading there now with a team of SAS. Your Red Unit guys – I’m guessing this is them, right? – they might be good. Eight of them, they might be able to force the bullion’s location out of me. But trust me: they go to find it, the SAS will be waiting and they will slaughter them, and you. I don’t care how much gear you have. They’re dead men.’

  As one, the silhouettes had moved down on to their knees. They raised their rifles and aimed them directly at Tony and Al-Zafawi.

  ‘Your only hope of beating an SAS unit,’ Tony said, ‘is me.’

  Silence.

  The silhouettes remained in the firing position. Tony kept his rifle trained on Al-Zafawi’s head. His grip was sweaty.

  ‘You want your money back?’ Tony said quietly, so only Al-Zafawi could hear. ‘Never going to happen. Not if you work alone. But if we retrieve it together, we split it. Fifty-fifty. You supply the men, I tell you how to survive an SAS ambush. You can take the glory. You’ll have pictures of a bunch of SAS corpses to stick on the net. You’ll be the man of the moment and I’ll help you do it. But first, you get your guys to stand down.’

  Silence.

  ‘Seriously, buster. If there’s a firefight now, I can’t guarantee I’ll survive, but I can guarantee you won’t.’

  Silence.

  Sweat dripped into Tony’s eye. He blinked to clear it.

  Suddenly Al-Zafawi barked an instruction. Nothing happened. Al-Zafawi shouted again. Then, with obvious reluctance, the silhouettes lowered their weapons. Tony watched them do it. Lowering his own was a risk. But it was one he had to take. He let the rifle fall to his side. ‘Good call,’ he muttered.

  Al-Zafawi struggled to his feet. Tony grabbed him by the upper arm to steady him, but the Taliban leader brushed him away. ‘I do not need your help to stand,’ he hissed. ‘Get off me.’ He shouted something else to the silhouettes. They approached as a unit, the headlamps from their vehicles casting long shadows into the cave. They were military men. All wore camo, a few had bandoliers strapped round their bodies. Sturdy boots, khaki-sprayed weapons, sand collected in the folds of their clothes. They walked with the arrogant swagger of confident fighters.

  Al-Zafawi approached them, leaving Tony by the fire. It was clear that the leader’s authority over these men was not absolute. He started talking quickly, waving his arms, pointing back towards Tony, at the burned vehicle chassis outside the cave, and out into the desert. The men looked reluctant. They glanced over at Tony with aggressive looks. But Al-Zafawi was clearly persuasive. After a minute or two they were nodding. Some of them even looked at Tony with interest. A real SF guy, in their midst, prepared to show them what it would take to defeat an SAS unit. For a wannabe special forces team, this was something.

  Tony moved away from the fire towards the Red Unit. ‘We don’t have much time,’ he told Al-Zafawi. ‘The SAS will be moving into position as we speak. The longer they have to bed in, the tougher it’s going to be to take them out. We should get moving.’

  The guys in the Taliban unit might have softened their attitude towards him, but there was no indication from Al-Zafawi that Tony was anything other than a necessary evil. His bruised, bleeding face had not lost its flinty, antagonistic expression. ‘Where is it?’ he demanded.

  Tony knew he would have to give up the location of the cache at some point. But not yet. He had given Al-Zafawi good reason to work with him, but he didn’t fully trust him to make the right decision. That said, he knew that these guys would know the terrain intimately. They would know the best routes and could likely command the main highway. At some point, he’d have to use their expertise. ‘Does one of your guys have a map of the area?’ he said.

  ‘Of course. Not that they need it. Without us you will be lost.’

  ‘For now we head west along the mountain range. When we get to the vicinity, I’ll mark up our location on the map. Together we’ll work out the best way to approach.’

  Al-Zafawi looked like he was trying to find fault with the plan. The fact that he couldn’t made him appear even more sour. He said something to one of his Red Unit guys. The militant stepped forward and handed Al-Zafawi his rifle. Al-Zafawi slung it expertly across his chest. He knew how to handle the weapon, no question. And he was a grisly sight, his face bloodied and his hair burned from his encounter with Black, his expression harsh, clad in camo gear and fully tooled up. Tony made a note not to underestimate him.

  Al-Zafawi issued another instruction. The unit melted back towards the vehicles. Al-Zafawi pointed at one of them, indicating that Tony should ride in it. Tony shook his head. ‘Me and you, in the same one.’

  The Taliban leader jutted out his chin arrogantly, but didn’t dissent. Tony followed him to the nearest vehicle. He saw now that they were all Land Rovers. Sand was drifting up against their tyres, but Tony at least trusted the militants to make their way through these conditions. Instinctively, he took the back seat position behind the driver. The safest place to be. Or, at least, the place where he could most easily put the driver out of action if he needed to. Al-Zafawi took the seat next to him. Another Red Unit guy sat up front. The stench of sweat and death hung in the air.

  Al-Zafawi rapped on the dashboard. The driver took it as an instruction to move off. Their Land Rover took the lead in the convoy that headed back across the open ground in the direction of the main highway. The vehicle’s suspension was poor and they jolted roughly across the uneven ground, the light from the five vehicles illuminating the swirls of sand ahead. Tony stared out of the window. His thoughts turned to Danny Black. What was he doing now? Was he caught in this sandstorm? What was his strategy?

  And how were Tony and his scratch band of Taliban militants going to get the better of him?

  Mina’s grandmother was unimpressed. The sound of the sandstorm outside was rising. They all wanted to be shut up and safe. But even the old lady could tell that the female soldier needed help, and that she wouldn’t get it anywhere else.

  The woman was lying on Mina’s thin mattress. Mina had used a cooking knife to cut the plastic ties that had bound her patient’s wrist. The horrible wounds on her face glistened in the candlelight. She didn’t move. There was barely a sign of breathing.

  ‘Is she even alive?’ the old woman had said as Mina and her friends carried the unconscious woman into their poor dwelling place on the western side of the river that bisected Panjika. And then a question that was plainly of more immediate importance to her: ‘Did anybody see you?’

  Mina shook her head. ‘We were careful, Grandmother,’ she said.

  Her two friends loitered by the door, blue-robed shapes in the candlelight. They were obviously keen to be away. Mina nodded at them and they left silently. Mina turned back to her grandmother.

  ‘Her . . . her friends have been killed,’ she stuttered. ‘Tortured and killed. A man was going to kill her too. Another soldier. Not an Afghan. I stopped him. He ran away, but first he slammed the back of her head against the tree—’

  ‘You stupid child,’ her grandmother whispered. ‘The Imam has disappeared. The Taliban will be asking questions. What are you doing, involving yourself in the affairs of men at a time like this? Do you want to get yourself killed?’

  ‘What do you mean, the affairs of men?’ Mina hissed at the old lady. ‘She is not a man?’ She pointed at the soldier.

  ‘She thinks she is, doing men’s work. Look where it has got her.’

  Mina’s eyes flashed in the candlelight. She was tired of doing nothing. Of being just a faceless shape in the background while the men ruined her country all over again. She was tired of doing what she was told, instead of what was right. ‘She helped us,’ she said, ‘so we should help her. And if you won’t, I will do it alone.’

  Granddaughter and grandmother stood, locked in a fierce stare. It was the grandmother who turned away first. ‘Fetch water,’ she muttered. ‘We should clean her face and give her something to drink, if she will take it.’

  ‘Thank you, Grandmother,’ Mina said. She looked over at their patient. The woman was like a corpse. Maybe she would be, soon.

  That thought was enough to send Mina scurrying into the other room where there was a clay jug of fresh water sitting on an old wooden table. She found a bowl and a cup, filled them and carried them back to her patient. Mina’s grandmother was crouching by the woman’s side, muttering a prayer. She had a cloth in one hand. Mina placed the bowl of water by her side. Her grandmother dipped her cloth into the water and started dabbing their patient’s facial wounds. Each time she rinsed the cloth, the water turned a slightly darker shade of pink. The patient’s face didn’t look any better.

  ‘Let me give her a drink,’ Mina said.

  Her grandmother nodded, moved back and allowed Mina to shuffle along so she was crouching by the woman’s head with the cup of water. She put one hand behind the head and gently raised it. Placing the cup to her patient’s lips, she gently moistened them. She didn’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do.